City Council - Regular Meeting

It is 5:00 p.m. on February 10th. We are here for our city council study session. Um how this will go for for folks who who may not know, we will have a few presentations. You have the information in your packets. We will hear from the folks who are making the presentations. We'll have time for questions, comments. Just ra raise your hand, give me a little hand wave. I'll keep an eye on the hands that are being raised and I'll keep an eye on the time. And when you're ready to jump in with questions or comments, just just let me know. We are ready to get started. Our first agenda item is the victim compensation fund. We have Lisa Peterson here, our city clerk, and we have Judge Goodbye here.

Good evening. Good evening.

Thank you guys for letting us come and speak about the victim compensation fund. I'm going to jump into the PowerPoint so we can get through it and then we'll open it up for questions. Okay. So, as you know, the city of Golden is a home home rule municipality that we can regulate our own municipal court. And as a part of municipal court, we can sentence individuals and um order them to pay restitution to compensate victims for losses resulting from municipal offenses. Most of the time, it's a car accident of some kind. That's majority of what we see when it comes to restitution. However, in some cases, restitution is not reasonably collectible due to a defendant's financial circumstances. And currently, we don't have a mechanism to supplement restitutions when defendants can't pay. As a result, victims remain uncompensated for their out-ofpocket expenses. So, this is three-fold. So, the first part is the proposed ordinance which amends chapter 2.24 of the Golden Municipal Code. Then there's a proposed resolution which adopts standards and guidelines for the VCF VCF victim compensation fund just to clarify that. And then the proposed resolution as well to amend the fee schedule. So we'll have to add in the $5 victim compensation fee as well. So with it comes to the proposed ordinance which amends chapter 2.24 of the GMC establishes the victim compensation fund dedicated solely to victim compensation purposes. It authorizes city council to establish the VCF fee as assessed as court costs on defendants who are found guilty, who plead guilty or no contest. So, it does not apply to someone who's found not guilty um for their case. And it provides that the VCF fee not be waved or converted to community service unless a judge finds them to qualify for um that to be waved, which majority BR and house type of population. This allows the initial funding through

the transfer of forfeited municipal court bond amounts with discretion for future transfers by the city manager. Establishes a process allowing the prosecutor to request dispersement from the VCF within six months of the conviction or plea subject to the approval of the presiding judge and their restitution will be ordered payable to the VCF when the fund has compensated a victim. So it doesn't alleviate the defendant from their obligation to pay the court back um pay the city back. it would go their payment would go into the VCF fund. So the resolution ensures that the VCF dispersements are made only upon motion by the city prosecutor and it vest the judge with discretion to approve or deny requests based on council adopted standards. The um guidelines are promoting consistent and transparent administration of the fund and it does not authorize expenditures beyond available fund balances and it does not obligate the city's general fund. So, financial considerations. The VCF is designed to be self-supporting. So, the revenue sources would include the council established $5 VCF fee assessed as court costs. Our court costs are currently $40 for each person that comes into court. Um, or if they pay in advance, they're still assessed at $40. Um, so this would change our court cost to being 45 in total. And then the forfeited municipal court bond amounts transferred into that fund in the amount of $15,000. We have 16,000 and some change in there right now. So, it would basically almost bring that down to just shy of $2,000 left in that fund, the forfeited bond account fund. Um, and to go back to the VCF fee, um, based on numbers over the past two years, the average is we have about 14,000 a year that would be put into the VCF fund based on the $5 VCF fee being assessed with our numbers that we currently have. So, dispersement limits. So, city council may wish to consider whether to establish a maximum dollar amount for

victim compensation fund dispersements on a perase basis. The purpose of a dispersement cap would ensure equitable distribution of limited funds among multiple victims and cases, provide long-term sustainability of the fund, provide clear expectations to victims, prosecutors, and the court, and reduce the risk that a small number of cases could disproportionately deplete the available resources. On the other hand, conversely, council may also consider whether strict limits could reduce the court's ability to address unique or particularly impactful cases and whether judicial discretion alone is sufficient to ensure appropriate use of the fund. Fort Leon is one of the other cities in Colorado that currently has a VCF um fund. Um, Judge and Andy both work in Fort Lupton and so they're very familiar with how that program works. So, Golden would join Fort Lupin as one of the only cities in Colorado currently with a VCF. Other Colorado communities do assess victim search charges though. We wouldn't be one of the only ones who assess victim search charges. Just goes to different things. Um, Lakewood does what's called veil, victim assistance and law enforcement. Those funds primarily go to programs as opposed to directly victim assistance. And so we prefer the VCF approach because it allows us to directly impact on the victims on their out-of- pocket costs. Based on anticipated case types, available funding, and the importance of maintaining the long-term viability of the fund, the presiding judge recommends a maximum dispersement of $2,000 per case. Anything you want to add to that?

I'm sure if they have questions.

Okay, so a couple case examples that we had um over the last two years. Um, case number one, the defendant is an elderly individual who has been in active case management with the navigator. At the time of his case, he was being evicted from his place of residence. Um, he had an accident. The judge ordered 2850 in restitution. The defendant is not able to pay. He's unhoused at the time. He has no income. Um, and so that amount has just been sitting there. The victims are also of limited income and elderly. And so this has really been impactful to them. one of their cars was total and he had to get a new car and he was out of pocket for that cost. And we've not been able to help those victims become whole again with their out-of- pocket costs. Case two, a defendant hit a victim in an accident. The victim did not help have health insurance at the time of the accident and so her medical bill was extremely large, $15,554.95 in restitution that the judge ordered and the defendant refuses to pay that restitution. In both of these situations, while the cases would be sent to collections, um the judge could order them to be sent to collections, the restitution process would not result in a meaningful compensation to the victims. So, policy considerations for council discussion. City council may wish to consider and provide feedback on the following policy issues. The overall purpose and scope of the victim compensation fund, appropriate limits, and funding mechanisms, and long-term sustainability of the fund. And that is the end of my PowerPoint. So anybody Thanks, Judge. And I would love to open the floor for questions. We still have got about 12 minutes or so. So any questions that I can help answer?

Lisa, can you flip back to slide 12? Those are our talking points. Um, looks like we're looking side. Oops. Sorry. That's okay. There you go. Question. Yes. Done. uh $45 court fee. How does that compare to other municipalities in the area? Is it higher, lower? Do you know? It seems relatively high.

So, it's it's hard to compare apples to oranges. A lot of courts do sir charges based on the fine amount. And so, they So, if someone's fine is 160, they could have a 5% search charge. And depending on or it's lower, the the search charge can be bigger. Like Lakewood does a search charge. Um, Broomfield has a search charge. So, it's it's hard to say that it's greater or smaller because those amounts can vary. We don't do a search charge. We just have a flat court cost. A lot of them have a court cost and a search charge on top of that. Okay. Do you know any more information?

I would say I do this at a number of different courts and I would say we're pretty much in the middle. So Iowa Springs is 35 and if you go I do relief work at Thornton and Westminster and they're higher. So I'd say we're you know we're not too high, we're not too low, we're kind of goalilocks. So Patty, did you have a question? I did. Um yeah, do you have like ballpark how much or how frequent these um these cases would occur and how much would the demand be per year?

Yeah. So um for context and I did answer a question for um councelor Kzinski yesterday. For context, we we've averaged about maybe two a year since 2015 that are still outstanding and pending restitution. Last year, 2024 was our highest year of unpaid restitution. We had seven cases of unpaid restitution totaling over $27,000. That is not normal. But given that number, I've calculated it in seven requests at $2,000 each. If that's the cap that we're going to go at, that puts us at 14,000, which is exactly what we would average in our VCF fund accumulation over a year.

This is my contribution. And obviously Lisa's prepared so much of this and thank you. Um this is what I would suggest. Um is that you you really the the question is whether this is something that you want. Um because it's not my court or Lisa's court. It's your court and we come in and we perform a service for you. Um but it's really um the the court needs to resemble what what you want on behalf of of your voters. Um, right now you have a uh you have a municipal court that's that steers clearly within, you know, the lines. Okay? We don't have bells and whistles like they have uh at the state court. If you went to the state court, you would see they have, you know, a variety of services like pre-trial supervision or juvenile diversion or probation officers, you name it. They pay a lot of fees for those kinds of things. you have a court that receives the appropriate kinds of tickets from your law enforcement agency. Um, so u you know, we're handling the kind of cases that should come to us. I can't say that about all the courts that I practice in. Some of them uh have pretty serious matters come here, but we're we are efficient and we are lean. Um the question I think that you want to answer you know in your role is you know do we want to expand the lines a little bit because this is not a a traditional within the lines kind of municipal court operation. You can see there's not too many municipal courts that do this. I think you should um but it's not my court. It's your court. Um I I think that the good that comes for these uh limited number of cases um is worth it. And I think you know I I was a prosecutor a long time ago 92 uh the state adopted crime victim's

compensation funds and I was prosecutor at the time. There is something intuitively kind of um appealing about uh a class of offenders contributing to address wrongs that that a victim class may have. And I I think that's that's kind of philosophically appealing even if it's as little as five bucks, you know. And when I say offender, I mean me, you know, traffic ticket guy, anybody, you know, everybody pitches in a little bit and there's a unique class here that may need a little bit of help. Um, I like that. Um, but it's not my court. It's your court. So, I think the big question is, do you want it? Um, I have a high level of confidence that that the mechanics um about how to run it that Lisa will she will excel. She'll answer those questions. That's what she's good at. I'm not no good at those things. She's nice to have somebody whose skills offset your skills, but you know, the mechanics of how to how to to run it, how to administer it. Um, I I I think those questions will be will be answered pretty quickly, but

yes, Mayor,

thank you for that. And I'm just going to address um the considerations. I do support having the fund. I um you know, through no fault of their own. they've been um injured or out uh financially and um it sounds like the city's process to order restitution but then go to collections isn't always successful right away. Um so an opportunity to uh provide something to the victims while that process seemingly may take longer. I think that's great. I do think a limit is appropriate um so that um you know 15,000 isn't going to one victim and then there's nothing for for everyone else. So I'm supportive of the 2,000. I think the the part that I want to just from a from a policy perspective implementing something new I'd really like it to come forward for review. So to to take it and in a reasonable period of time come back. It's not a lot of money and those small amounts don't typically come to council. But I do think it's appropriate to have a review of the program to see if it's working as intended, what those financial amounts are accumulating, too much, too little, if adjustments are needed in the policy. I hate to like approve something and then we don't look at it again. you know,

you can even sundown it and then decide whether or not it's something or just a periodic, you know, or just a review even. It doesn't have to be forever and ever, but but an initial because something new like this um the limit might not be appropriate, the estimates may not be appropriate and and frankly the the impact to the victims I think you know would be um important considerations. So that would just be my request of um you know having a kind of a review. Thank you, Emily.

Yeah. So, I would agree. Um, I think this program could do a lot of good, especially because we are talking about people who have made some sort of wrong and then these victims are out there and they have to deal with their wrongs and different types of financial classes. Um, and kind of tacking on to what Laura, our mayor has said, um, I I would like to see how the process works. I did email you about like, hey, how would this work? Is it a Q? So, I'm a victim. I'm making claim and then I'm getting this money, but I would like to see how we do have a queue ever. Is this stacking up and then is this queue over time getting bigger where people are waiting still months to then get these fees back? So, yeah, overall I think it's a good idea. I just like to see the support process in the back end.

That could be part of the review. Yeah. Yep. Talking about that part. Yeah. Patty and then I have a quick question. Um, so I'm a little concerned about, you know, the the two examples you gave. One someone was lacking the ability to pay and the other the guy just absolutely refused. And um,

in I could see a situation where people just choose not to because they're like, "Oh, well, I'm not going to. The victim is going to be made whole and so I don't have to." Um, do you have you in in any of your research seen that something like that and how would we avoid that kind of a situation or would we prioritize victims whose who the offender could not pay over ones who just refuse to? Well, you've I mean rest collecting restitution

in municipal court for higher cases, higher dollar cases is a real it's just a real challenge. Um, I for the second victim, I created an order uh that is a a civil judgment that she could go and file in the district court and then she could pursue collection actions against this person, but she'd have to hire a lawyer, but she would have a court order saying that this amount is owed by this person um uh to this other person. You're talking about a problem that many municipal courts have to struggle with because we really don't have, you know, in the state court, if somebody owes tens of thousands of dollars, you you make it a condition of their probation and if they don't pay, uh, then you can violate their probation and you can send them to jail and stuff like that. We're not I'm not running a debtor's I'm not running a debtor's court, you know. I'm not going to incarcerate people, you know, particularly if I have concerns about whether or not they're they have the ability to pay. The second guy, I don't know whether he had the ability uh to pay or not. He was an interesting case. Uh he thought that because he believed that the victim uh was not a citizen that he didn't owe any money. Uh and pitched that as a why would I have to pay? And I said, "Well, she's up the money whether she's a citizen or not." She went to the hospital and but he was a somewhat recalcifant uh person and I hope that she pursued collections on it. That would have been a nice option that was available then, but I don't know if that really answers your question. There's not a good answer at the municipal court level. When you get above five, six, $7,000, you just don't have many good options. You certainly don't have the kind of options

that you'd have in state court. And Andy is going to be submitting the motion for it. And so Andy's gonna he has experience with it in Fort Leon. So I think he's going to have experience in knowing which cases he should submit for restitution. Lisa, um it sounds like you will be doing the administrative work for this. Do you have the bandwidth to add more administrative lift to your plate? Um, so I have a new court clerk and with some of the efficiencies I have planned over for the court coming up in the future, I believe this is something that she can also take onto her plate doing the restitution piece and doing the submitting that to AB. Thank you for asking.

Yeah, sure. I I do support it. I do think it's an excellent program and the $2,000 I think your recommendation is very reasonable. Go ahead, Zach.

Two quick things. One is I'd like to see when it comes back that there's some inflation adjustment so that if it does continue that we don't have to keep seeing it uh when that money becomes less valuable. The other idea would be a discussion with finance about whether we could cash flow this because it's awkward if somebody's waiting for restitution and we have to wait for somebody else to submit their bond. If it's only a $15,000 pool, I feel like the city could cash flow it and make it whole at the end of the year or or figure it out. But if it affects the quality of the program because we're waiting on funds, I guess I'd like to think about how to work through that in advance instead of fighting over, you know, what's not much money. Yes,

just I want to echo a lot of what was said here. Um, definitely I support this. I've got the same concerns because it is new and I agree. I think intuitively it feels right, but because it is new and we would be one of a few. The review would be helpful with some of the measures that folks spoke about. And I I came here with a little bit of questions around not necessarily the financial sustainability. seems like you guys have a really good handle on those numbers. But to more your point, the administrative sustainability, like we're confident in our ability to adopt this without a bunch of administrative overhead. And then you said something interesting around we have the correct kinds of cases coming to our court. Yeah.

Today that fit this model. Anything that we should think about to continue that practice to to not grow that administrative overhead? I should probably add that, you know, at the state level, they've been doing a CBC crime victim's comp since '92. They have a board.

So, every judicial district has a board that's appointed by the district attorney. I was elected DA that appointed a board back in uh Eagle back in the 90s. And then when I was the number two person in Adams, I was the lawyer that uh gave legal counsel to the board. So, I have a unique kind of experience with regard to these kinds of decisions. Um, we're not proposing a board. We're proposing that I make the decision. Um, uh, but if you would be more comfortable with a board, you could consider that. I don't think you should have a board. I like the idea that Andy files a motion and then I if I want more information, then I say I want more information, you know. Um, it's just a little bit more streamlined. But we are doing it a little bit differently than the way that the state does it.

Thank you. I hear a lot of support here. Ghart, do you have anything to add? Well, I I don't feel like I need to waste a lot of time repeating what others have said. So, sounds good. You're happy. Uh, okay. Um, does anyone have any last minute thoughts? Do you both have the answers and the direction that you need? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Good to see you all again. Thank you all. Thank you. Our next agenda item is the east zone amenity plan. And I think we're going to have Steve.

Evening council. Evening.

I think Mr. Clerk will get the presentation up pretty soon. So, um, how nice to see you all and it's it's certainly been an exciting couple of years for Heart of Golden since, um, you know, the adoption of the planning document in August of 2022. two years ago, perhaps to the weaker day, um council gave direction as to what concept to move forward with for the municipal building and that led to intensive design and most recently um completion of design, groundbreaking in July. And if you've been looking at the live stream, we have stair towers and elevator cores and we'll soon have lower level slabs. Um but um oh so generally as with all staff, I don't know if this is work. Oh, right. Um, one of the big themes in the heart of Golden Planning document was focus on the east end and if feasible to relocate municipal uses in that direction. And so in addition to the municipal building which is going very excitedly. Um, in 2025, council gave direction to proceed with planning for the east zone. And under full disclosure, in the original heart of deac heart of golden document, the east zone was from Fort Street East. about um a year or so ago, we started talking about um the exciting opportunity to link Parket Park to the areas east of Ford Street and and took the liberty of um this this version of the east zone starts at Washington and goes east. So, it includes Piper Park, Vanover Park, Tucker Gulch, which most folks um don't never knew much about in

this area. It's not along the trail that you go further north. Um and of course the properties along Archer Street and the area east of Archer Street directly south of the excuse me under construction municipal building. So in March of this year you authorized a contract with um planning and design firm HDR and Super Bloom to work on it and we um we got started. Nice picture. You don't see this view very often. It's with the Archer Street properties in the foreground and then Vanover Park and then the Water Street properties and then Parford Park way in the in the distance. But we we were able to start in conjunction with some other Heart of Golden activities this spring. In fact, um the first meeting in April was like two weeks after we were under contract. And so our consultants were there just to listen and enjoy. Um but throughout the summer and fall there's been a number of engagement opportunities, gold guiding golden opportunities, several visits to the parks board, one visit to the arts and culture commission and um some engaging risk risky things like um community meeting in the park and you never know whether it's going to rain and the the wind always knocks over the boards when you're when you're out in the park. Um but It was not surprising but um I think confirming that the community engagement themes were very very similar to what we've been hearing in recent years with Heart of Golden and frankly with Creek Corridor information that and they are on page two of the memorandum. Um, those are some big takeaways in here and I don't know to what degree they become

longerlasting takeaways for community feelings about the downtown area, but um I wanted to highlight them be before going into some other recommendations. Um but nature first. There was a strong recommendation that um activities that are more nature-based, not uh and not destinationbased goes through all of the input that not wanting to um our heart of Golden Corridor to be a Disneyland or some sort of based largely certainly not solely but even largely on attracting um folks as a destination. But connectivity, connectivity always comes up in gold and and multimodal access and connections outward from this property and within the properties. Um, resident focus for everyday use. Um, we have a sort of somewhat lovehate relationship with events in the community and how they are so cool, but the same spaces want to be designed so that you and I and our families can go and enjoy them on an everyday basis. and not feel that we're out of place, that we we feel very comfortable there for the 95% of the year or whatever days. Um that that it is solely a comfortable place for folks to be. And it just when it says resident focused, that doesn't mean visitors aren't welcome, but it's looking towards individual experiences and smaller smaller activities and more intimate uh right-sized events. and then local character over iconic. So I I'm attempting to be quickly here and circling back. Our goal tonight is to see if you're okay to schedule some sort of formal action on this. And I don't use the word adoption necessarily because this this is not something that

we would build. This is an aspirational statement of what the areas could be and if um if you're supportive of it as the community was and as the parks board is um it would lead to further um preliminary design of the entire area and perhaps final design of the area east of Archer Street so that we could try to finalize that area the summer of 27 as we're moving into the building. But as I say, it's it's aspirational in nature and um I I couldn't even imagine that we would get to where we got for what I find to be the most exciting area is Vanover Park, Tucker Gulch, and the Archer Street properties of what they can be. So, wanted to take a couple minutes to run through those slides and then take some brief questions if you have them and see. Um, ideally if you were supportive, I would bring this back on March 17th for you to um, one quick sidebar. Um, in my old life as your planning director in dealing with Dr. Cog, there's always a question of what is the word? Is it approve, accept, acknowledge, endorse? What action we might ask you to take in March? I don't know. But it essentially means are you in supportive of this? And can we proceed? Um, those are the four focus areas that came out of the plan. And not surprisingly, Parfford Park does not include recommendations for much change at all. There is a recommendation for an east west trail near the north and by the um by the restroom and excuse me to improve um ADA access east and west and to make some connections and to um one of the terms that's been used throughout the document is to rew a little bit along

the creek edge to focus on native plantings a little bit more and make sure that the the plantings things respect the character of the the Creek corridor. But and that's one reason that in the memo you might have noticed that the 30% design recommended from Ford to Archer doesn't include paret because we would see that as a later phase and the design for Ford to Archer is going to be complicated because of the Tucker Gulch changes and the fact that you need um flood control approval for that change. Even though it's improving the flood plane dramatically, you need other approvals. But Parker Park would remain um a focus of the community. Um much of the event focus still will probably happen there because the community likes it there, but also if you look at it on a on an everyday basis, the same types of intimate activities that you see there is what we would expect to see going forward. But then Vanover Park, the recommendations are very little change west of the bridge, the bridge that crosses Clear Creek and takes you over to to Ford Street by the other bridge over Kenny Run. But from the east area, and the east area has always been the the least used in my experience. Um there's a little pump track there and a little big rock that people climb on. But the area by the gulch is um has never been used as much. And when you start to look at what Tucker Gulch could be if you remove the concrete walls, lay back the slopes, terrace down to it, um make it an area that is um so incredibly attractive compared to what it is now and useful. um that really will um vitalize the east side of Vancouver Park

and then also the gulch itself. So it would be a incredible amenity. It it is somewhat unfortunate that um from the from the north end of Vanover Park to 10th Street um is very very constrained by properties and the East Street right away and is not included in this plan. Um there is some thought with planning and engineering as to what we can do with the Tucker Gulch trail from the bridge up to 10th as they're looking to realign the crossing over um not over 10th crossing of 10th. But um this is what excited us the staff team at the during the interviews when we were selecting the team and it's gotten such a positive rel um reaction from the committee and also from the parks board um including it was the parks board that came up with the concept of freeing the gulch freeing it from its concrete prison. Um just another look at that. Um on the east side of the gulched there's um and because this is aspirational it will not look like this. It will look as we design it as a community together. It will look um I hope it meets this spirit and this um feeling but it'll be whatever we design as a group when we get down to actual design. But um another restroom, shade structures, terrace areas, a little pump track. There was a lot of support in the community engagement for a little bit of a pump track and then um all the way over to Archer Street. Um, one of the mistakes I made, um, um, I won't I won't have Scott or Carly take any blame, but I assumed the city hall was going to be a rectangular building, square or rectangular, and that the distance from the building down to the Farmers Highline Canal would be more

significant than it is currently. By having the building be so um sustainable and oriented in such a way, the area east of Archer Street becomes more narrow, but it um has some tremendous attributes, including the very east end that nobody sees or knows about unless unless you really seek it out. Um but so what came up out of that is more of a um a walking experience, seating overlook experience. Um if we're really creative, perhaps a better relationship with Farmers Highline Canal than the six foot chain link fence, but um a quiet um reflective area towards the east end. public art might want to be focused through this area as as a walking tour in the east end of our heart of Golden um corridor, but this is an area that staff sees as completing this in the summer of 27 would be really ideal as we're completing the landscaping to the north up to the building. Some of the areas there include the storm drainage pond at the south end of the building that will be created by the building, but the landscape treatment of it and whether there's art in it can be um enhanced by this project. And then lastly, there are some mobility recommendations recommendations to continue to look at Water Street area, 10th Street, Complete Street, which is in the city's transportation master plan. but also because it is appearing that a Ford Street underpass is not in the cards in the near term. Um a safety enhancement at the corner of Water Street and Ford Street that includes a median and a pedestrian activated signal to um to try to organize crossings in the in the um in the busy months. Organize crossings

so um we're not impeding traffic up and down. One of the benefits of more recent technology is for years we would have told you that you can't put a signal there because it will not work timing wise with 12th street and 10th street but uh the technology has advanced enough that our engineers and the consulting engineers engineers are assure us that it can be synchronized and what it would do is it would take people crossing the street and put them in cohorts. I think we call them in in sociology and economics, we call them cohorts, I think, but groups so they're not just constantly streaming across the street. Um, that's the short version of why I'm so excited about this plan and would love to um proceed with the next steps once we get funding. Uh the DDA may choose to fund part of the next steps of the design, but we would we would work together to try to fund that design either this year or early next year and keep working on it. The end.

Thank you, Steve. We have few minutes for some quick comments and questions. Yes, we

I'm excited, too. Um a couple of comments. One, uh specific to that intersection, um I I I know we really tried are not to add more crossings in that very short period because there's a crossing on the other side of the bridge, but agreed for safety and and mobility and connection. It's needed. Uh this is interesting and I'd be curious whenever it gets to this point. Uh removal of the turns onto Water Street there is a change. So, um you know, obviously it's not happening right away, but um but yeah, that that taking away that lefthand turn and that through street um which gets used often um not always safely. So, um very rarely safely, but uh so yeah, I think that's an interesting concept in design, not just for the pedestrian aisle and the crosswalk, but to actually remove those turns and and that straight through. So, um I'm sure there'll be lots more conversation. Um, but around the transit mobility side of things, I I I appreciated the changes to Parfet Park for the bus um that's proposed. I would I don't think I saw anything about potential locations for transit stop um east of Ford. So anywhere in that area um you know if we were to extend orcart if we were to have shuttle to the parking lots there to the police municipal building to Archer Street um you know what would be a great location for that and I'm hoping that sooner rather than later we can have that extension of the Orcart shuttle once the the building opens and um we we already see it now with all the parking that goes on in that parking lot that a transit option would be beneficial. So just yeah I I didn't see if that was any part of the thinking or locations but but it would be great to

we kind of for p purposes of this didn't ignore 10th street but we assumed that 10th street would be handled by planning and engineering done on the drawing with Tucker Gulch joining up with the creek um I wonder if it'll be at the same grade as Kenny run so there'll be backflow because if it's only relying on the natural flows, it could end up being kind of scummy. So, I would just say that we engineer that properly. Um, literally scum in the sense,

you know, and stuff. Um, let's see. You also said that it would be pedestrian activated. I think what you meant and what you laid out later was that the existence of pedestrians will result in cohorts being created electronically, but there will not be a beg button. No, I think there might be a button. No, because that's that's not what I saw in the drawing, but you think there might be a beg button. That's my understanding. And that would be something city engineer would have to weigh in on before we chose something cohorts and it's not just like oh they just crossed and then Right. Yeah.

Well then I'm sorry to interrupt. Similar to 18th Street in Washington you do and Jackson Street you do push the button. Those are flashers. Those aren't a signal. Yeah. But it's different than what's being described at the the Hawk signal at 19th for the sophomore dorm which is that's what this is. Yeah. That's what I'm think. Okay. But you would still press a button in order to time the activation. Okay. But you don't just get to push it and it keeps happening. Yeah. It doesn't come right away, but the button is there. Okay. Um

Yeah. I mean, I wish that uh we could work through the engineering challenges of the crossing below Ford. So, are we just done with that like it's not going to happen or are we still pursuing engineering solutions to the wall and stuff? currently on the CIP to restart either next year or the year after, but I don't know for sure if we'll get information to warrant starting again. Okay. But it is No, it's not appropriated because it's not the first year, but it shows up in the CIP. Okay. I guess I'd like to fish or cut bait on that one because we keep spending a lot of money on design and if it's not going to happen, we should stop spending money on design.

We have stopped spending money. So there's money that we will reconsider if there's some change that's happened in 2027, but we have stopped spending money. Thank you,

Patty. Um, thank you. This is a lot of great work. I'm really very supportive of everything like basically Vanover East. I think that is you did a really good job of capturing what I've been hearing throughout the community and everything that um is desired that down there. Um I think the Water Street um crossing and then the future of Water Street is going to be really need to be thoughtful and have a lot of outreach. Um there's a lot of residents and a lot of employees that depend on the parking on Water Street. Um and there's an apartment building that you know has their parking their private parking accessed through Water Street. So, I think that I think we need to be really careful and really um conscientious about what we're going to do there in terms of like, you know, mobility, um biking, walking, um parking, everything like that. Um and so, do you have any ideas of Okay, so I just I'm curious about some of the big ideas you heard and like some of the things that you heard that did not make it into the plan or for various reasons. Um I think we've heard about an amphitheater for many years. Um but like what else has what else was considered and not included?

Dog park. Okay.

But there wasn't much support for that. Um more I don't want to say more event related but more destination related. Um iconic was the one the term that was used in the document that more more golden character less iconic. But in the the meeting that was in Lions Park where the wind was blowing, I stepped things down. Um had alternatives that folks voted on and there the one that was less formal and um what you see in the document was overwhelmingly supported by the folks there. So I think it was a um character related change that those things that weren't necessarily in character with the takeaways um were didn't proceed.

One of those was um at Parfet Park having more hardening of the landscape for more event traffic um and kind of like seating uh options for more of that sort of thing. And so that didn't get as much support. This was kind of the um as Steve said, the more um wild uh minimal change kind of option and so some of the bigger ideas didn't get as much support. I also want to say I like the um shade structure ideas especially if we're doing planting new trees like we need some shade in the interim while they create the new tree canopy especially around the type of built new building.

Steve, I'll jump in. I do think this is great. I'm definitely supportive. As we go farther down the planning road, I would like to consider some of these green spaces to be pesticidefree if possible. And pesticide I'm sorry for not mentioning that. Um

we had a great conversation the the more recent ones with the parks board about um planting uh very pointed emphasis on native plantings and pesticide free. I understand that the parks department is investigating the Dong Park experience and what it would take to broaden that, but yes, the the parks board folks are very much in that camp. Okay, great. Thank you. Does anyone else have any?

Well, the only comment I haven't heard is that, you know, one of the side benefits of this is it's going to increase the value of the city properties just north of the u north of the municipal building. So, as we decide what to do with those properties, um this will just make those enhance the value of those. From the DDA point of view, it also reflects that downtown doesn't necessarily stop at the creek. That um downtown is getting longer north and south as as the years change and putting a big emphasis into city public spaces on the north side of the creek is appropriate.

Question. I think it's pretty clear that the Archer House would go away as would the storage unit adjacent. Yes, the two parking lots, the the gray garage and the house would all um be removed in this plan. Okay. It comes to mind that there's some lights over there that people had wanted and don't want. What do you have? I guess I would want to make sure that we're thinking intentionally about whether this space is activated for nighttime use or not. Close at sunset. Think through that kind of stuff because might affect how you bring in power.

Um, and whether and while we're not going to have an event space, if we did want to activate the space, sometimes um having power is another consideration to think about. Um, so thank you. Okay, we are at time, maybe even a little over. Um, does anyone have any last minute comments? Steve, Carly, do you have everything that you need from us tonight? No, I would hope to be back um in five weeks. We will see you on March doing something. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Um, next on our agenda, we are talking code. I'm going to add a preface before they all uh get started. Um, two things. First, we did just send out the presentation to you all. Um, so check your email uh for this presentation if you want to follow along. Uh and then the second item uh that I wanted to comment on, there are uh several maps that are provided as part of the uh packet and there is a staff recommended map. There's a state map and then there's a I'll say middle of the road map. Um I want uh council to understand that we we have been operating under a a state imposed deadline as it relates to review and adoption of this code. Um there's an adoption deadline of April the 1st and there's an implementation deadline of July the 1st. The state has been challenged uh in a number of regards many uh from a technical aspect and a technological aspect uh that uh challenge our ability to to put some materials and information or to have a long time to study and review and comment and make um our recommendations. So we are uh we're working quickly with regards to this uh as a result of u just the process that this legislation took and the development of this state code that then we're mandated as a city to adopt. Uh what I want everybody to understand is that uh staff has made recommendations with regards to uh one of those three maps. You have the ability to select any of those three or provide direction today to staff to focus on any one of those three if you choose to go with the state map. Uh because it because it's new and because

we don't know all of the implications of this code to property owners or to the the city in general. It's totally okay. And I want everybody to understand uh that there's no hard feelings or no upset from staff if you decide to take a smaller step to start with. You have the ability to come back at any time and go back and adopt a different map. Um, so you could start with the state map now and then three months or six months or a year from now come back and adopt a different map after you have perhaps more information and we have more understanding about how uh this code is influencing or affecting homeowners. So I just wanted to provide that um for everybody for a little bit of additional context uh before they get started. So

thanks Scott. Thank you Scott. Uh good evening everybody. I think everybody knows me. Brett, uh, fire marshall for the city. It's good to see everybody again. I'm Scott Greer for new council members. I'm the chief building official for the city.

So, thank you for your time. We'll go quickly through the PowerPoint. And I know we've got a lot of questions about the code. So, uh, so the Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code Board was established by the state of Colorado through an act of the governor. Um, they were charged with creating the Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code or CWRC for short. government acronyms. So, we've got a number of them. We'll try to make it through. Um, they they were tasked with this. They had a timeline. Uh, July 1st of last year is when they were mandated by state law to uh actually adopt the code. And so, it was a little bit rush job there at the end. Just going to be honest with you. I followed it for since I started here at Colton. I've been following the the the formulation of the CWRC. Um, then DFPC, the Division of Fire Prevention and Control along with the board. uh was tasked with creating rules and policies to guide the adoption and the appeals process for uh maps uh especially locally adopted maps um for governing bodies. And so that is what 8 CCR157-39 is and that was included in your council packet as well. That is the the guiding rules and policy. This makes it a little bit easier. This no longer lives on their website, so I had to go digging for a little while to find it. But this is the timeline for adoption at the state level all the way down to the local jurisdiction. Both the adoption and then the enforcement by the governing body. And I'm going to use AJ authority having jurisdiction. That's us as we have it right. Governing body and local jurisdiction all the same. So please bear with me. I I apologize for mixing those up, but they're all the same. April 1st is when we're mandated by the state as a governing body, local jurisdiction to adopt this code, either the CWRC or something more restrictive. Uh the state mandated code is the minimum code that can be adopted. And

then July 1st of 2026, three short months either after the adoption, so if you adopt earlier than April 1st, uh still three months after that, you have to start enforcing it. Um but if we're shooting for an April 1 deadline for adoption u by that date then we're looking at a July 1 uh enforcement deadline. Uh that gives us local jurisdictions the authority the AHJ's a little bit of time to figure out processes and procedures building internal processes and procedures before rolling it out to the public and most notably giving time to educate the public on what is coming to you know a town near us. Uh so the board was tasked with not only creating the code but creating a map that uh would make it enforceable across different areas. Um some notable uh comments about the map for the state level which is on the left hand side of this PowerPoint uh well actually this PowerPoint here my apologies is our CWPP maps which y'all are all familiar with probably by now. I know I'm I'm very familiar and kind of nauseous from looking at them so much. um so often. Uh but the CWPP maps uh kind of set the baseline here for Golton. I just put this on here as a reference for y'all. Um the the state was tasked with creating this map that uh that used a methodology and we'll talk more about it in depth later. I'm sure you've got a lot of questions to come up with fire intensity classifications. A low fire intensity classification, a moderate fire intensity classification, and a high fire intensity classification. And these intensity classifications are based on chapter three of the CWRC uh which is fuel behaviors during a wildfire situation. And we can get as in depth into the science of wildfire as much as you want to. Probably not tonight. Um but you can always meet me for a cup of coffee if you want to, I guess, right? And talk wildfire science if you ever feel like it. Um we're going

to go go ahead and jump right into it. These are the three maps that we have presented for you inside the counselor packet. The state wildfire map is on the far left. Uh the the middle ground that uh Mr. Vargo stated uh is the home ignition zone map. Uh and then the last one is the staff recommended on the far right enhanced structural protection wildfire map. Uh you can thank Chief Bill for some fancy names for maps. Um he always has some good names for things. Um so we're going to jump right into what the state wildfire map is. There's a lot of words. I you don't have to read if you don't want to. I'll try to explain as much as possible. From first and foremost, I want to show you what number of parcels are actually being affected by the state. There is a mistake on here. We, as Mr. Vargo just said, we had some difficulties from the state getting their state data down to us in a packet that we could actually deliver into our GIS system. Uh, that's statewide issue. Um, and we do have one high-risk parcel, which is Apex Park, which I think councelor Vitri pointed out uh via question to to staff. Uh, Apex Park, which appears to have no structures on it whatsoever, uh, is a high risk. Now, when it comes to later determination of what that means, we'll talk about it. But attempts, uh, moderate class, moderate hazard, and class two, so moderate hazard is class two, like high hazard is class two. uh 639 parcels are affected in the city of Golden by that designation that the state has given. Uh low hazard or class one is 166 based on the state map. Uh the map attempts to encompass the current potential WOOI which is which is wildland urban interface geographic area where structures and other human development meets or intermingles with wildland or vegetative fuels. uh the original map gen was generated with a 20 meter resolution uh which was

deemed too detailed by the state. So we get hexagons instead um and that is what we were left with to try to parse at the parcel level uh to to figure out where all those little hexagons intersected with our parcels to determine their actual classifications. Um and so that that tool was decided on by the state wildfire uh resiliency board because it smooth filtered and aggregated uh the the parcels and and everything. So um we we went with a parcel level and it does not consider and what's really important here for council to note is it does not consider ember cast which is all those embers flying through the air during an actual wildfire landing near people's homes and vegetation. That was not what they did here. This was just where wild wild wildfire vegetation or wildland vegetation abudded what they considered to be urban. The next map uh is the home ignition zone wildfire map number of parcels affected. We did not uh change in the two staff maps that were created moderate hazard classification at all. uh we didn't want to overburden our community with class two uh an increase in class 2 designations. So 639 again is what we have here. But we did go through and more closely uh follow the home ignition zone recommendations of Colorado State Forest Service which says that 100 ft away from uh your house that is in the wildland urban interface should be mitigated. And so taking that just theory or concept and putting it into play for at the parcel level. If a parcel was within a 100 feet of a of a uh an identified parcel within the state wildfire map, we added it as a low risk. So it creates kind of a buffer. The

whole idea is trying to create a buffer around the city uh a hardening structure buffer along with vegetation buffer um so that it slows a potential community confilration. So and then our third map uh is the enhanced structural protection wildfire map. Uh in this one there there is one additional moderate and that's a right of way. So that that just got added a rightway there. Um and then uh low hazard class one is 1889. So you can you can see that it's a drastic increase but this map uh considers a broader embercast for the fuel density slope and potential wind conditions that we face here in the city of Golden. uh still doesn't bring much of the urban actual urban environment uh into the map because urban shouldn't burn if we do a good enough job of hardening and the structures around the the perimeter of our major city. Um and then uh it attempts to prevent a wildfire initiated community confilration wick uh while construction cost concerns as much as possible and we'll talk more about those later. uh this is what staff is recommending uh is this map right here. Again though just to echo Mr. Bargo you is your decision. So so to talk about the global wildfire resiliency code this is what it would be named once we adopt it. It no longer becomes the Colorado wildfire resiliency code. It becomes our wildfire resiliency code as a city. The Golden Wildfire Resiliency Code applies to new structures and major additions/modifications to existing structures in the identified wildland urban interface. This is a building code. This is not a retro not meant to be a retroactive code. Um and so it affects a a parcel when an

addition of 500 square feet or more is made to a structure within the that identified mapped area. So, if your parcel is outside of the map, you know, not shaded any color whatsoever, this doesn't affect you. But it does start affecting you if you're if you're shaded, um, and you go to add 500 ft or more to your your structure. Roof replacements shall comply with fire resistant roof requirements, making a class A. uh when reconstructing, replacing, altering, and repairing more than 25% of a building's existing walls, the walls in zone one, which is 0 to 5 feet immediately from the structure shall comply with code with the code, which is for class 2 areas only. So exterior walls do not affect, they don't come into play until you get into class two, that moderate um or high hazard. So that's that's something I wanted to note here for you. Fence replacements throughout the WOOI will require permitting when near habitable structures. So, your home uh you know, we will start requiring permits for those fences because they have to be non-combustible from your house to 8 ft away from your house, which prevents that wild that fire from spreading to your home and catching your home on fire. And then the code official has the authority to address a distinct hazard to life or property. I'm not the code official. Uh he is but um okay he's the man. Uh and I live in Scottsboro and you get to guess which one. Um both uh and then economic impact. We're flying through it but like I said I'm sure you have questions. Um the IBHS and Headarters economic study suggest that a building home that incorporates wildfire resistant building materials increases the cost of that project by 2% to 3%. um insurance institute for business and home safety IBHS is conducting a study to determine the economic impacts of the wildland urban interface code requirements. So they are specifically

looking at uh the CWRC uh but doing it on a a scale if you will sliding scale of if you meet the minimum minimum and then if you go a little bit above that and a little bit above that and what are the costs associated to homeowners or property owners when you do that. Um we expect uh those th those numbers those fiscal numbers to come out near April. So sometime around April, midappril is when they're supposed to be releasing those to us. So um House Bill 25182 goes into effect on July 1st, 2026. That House Bill, as many of you already know, deals with insurance transparency around wildland fire mitigation efforts. And so, uh, that goes effect here around the exact same time that we'll be enforcing the code. Um, and so that will help hopefully our our homeowners get a little bit more transparency from their individual insurance companies on what mitigation efforts will reduce their cost if at all possible. So, and that is the end. I don't have a nice Q&A slide because I just want to jump straight into Q&A with y'all.

Thanks. Thank you. I'm sure we have plenty of questions. Go ahead, G. So, I guess the first thing I was curious about is the impact on homeowners insurance costs for a house that sits in the orange area in the yellow area. Um, let alone uh insurance companies just cancelling insurance if your house happens to be in the orange or the yellow areas. So, what is the impact? Do we have any history yet?

So, that's a great question. uh we don't really have a history because most jurisdictions are still not adopting this code yet. They're they're in the same process that we are currently including Justin County. Um and so we don't know, but I can tell you that insurance companies generally don't care about what the state adopts. uh talking to some of the insurance companies, myself at the Colorado Fire Commission, um they don't think the state map goes far enough and they don't think that uh the state code goes far enough. Um you know, the state code, how it was written, the CWRC allows vinyl fencing um uh right up against the house. That's one of the exceptions made that I did end up writing out of our code because vinyl fencing does burn. So, it kind of does away with the whole non-combustible uh effort that we're trying to make there. And this code allows and what I have left is uh limited combustibility plants in that zone one, 0 to 5 ft. Um that's that's something that IBH doesn't like. They say that you shouldn't have anything that can burn within 0 to 5 ft. Low combustibility plants will eventually burn. Um but uh talking to many of our residents here in the city from my detailed home assessments um they our residents have a hard time you know wanting no plants near their home and so just suggesting that there is low combustibility that they can go with I thought was a fair option to leave in the the GWRC from the CWRC. I hope that answers your questions a little bit other than the fact that the insurance companies they have their own modeling proprietary modeling that they're not sharing with anybody. Hopefully this new bill, HB25, whatever, helps us get those maps.

Well, that's where I was wondering if the um more conservative approach is to take the limited map, watch what happens over the next six months. We can still implement the more aggressive map or extensive map for uh zoning requirements or something like that. Mhm.

But um let's you know kind of see what happens over the next six months before jumping to coloring a third of the city yellow and then seeing everyone's insurance policies double. Um, of course I don't even know if that's going to happen, but it's just cautious because later on today we're going to hear a lot about affordability. Mhm. And I I'd hate to um be causing a problem because we're trying to be really good. Sure. I I totally understand that, counselor. Uh the reason why the enhanced structural protection maps included is because it aligns with our CWPP. So, gotcha.

Don, uh, two quick questions. One is you just made one point that is this enhanced structural map lines up with our CWPP but my understanding is that that's not kind of statutory enforcable and this is and so that makes that connection. Yes sir. Y

but I actually share his concerns about insurance. Um actually just a subtle thing. Um, a lot of our side setbacks are only five feet and so if you have to have eight foot fence away from the house, um, you're going to end up with a discussion with your neighbor who may not be on board. So, I'm wondering, do we have latitude to allow the building inspector to work through those conflicts or are we going to have people in front of us saying, "My neighbor won't deal with his fence and it's 8t from my house." So, something to think about.

I mean, are we talking about neighbors who share a fence or defense?

So, I can imagine two houses that are 10 ft apart. They have a fence they share and they're attached to their houses and there's no way to have it 8 feet from both houses um because they share a fence that's, you know, within five feet because the side setbacks are often five feet. That's a great point, counselor, if I may. So, and I I can't draw. My wife's the artist, not me. Uh, when we're thinking about the fencing, it's not from your house out as much as it is 8 ft of that fence line. So, that fencing 8 ft. And I I understand what you're saying. There's still areas that are going to be potentially affected neighbor to neighbor. Right. The gate to the backyard.

Exactly. Right. I I totally understand that, sir. But, you know, measuring 8 ft. I just want to be clear of the actual fence, not away from the house. Okay. So, it could go five and three. Five and three. That would meet it. Yes, sir. That's a great question though, which is bizarre. It's Yeah.

Yeah. I some of those things and I know it's over email um because yeah, I I found these requirements a little confusing especially because everything we usually have in building requirements for triggers is always like does it meet the criteria? Yes or no? this is almost like talking in the negative. So that's kind of my first point. point I was like why it's I had to think about the requirement and then be like okay the opposite of this means this and I don't know if we could change that and then following on to that it's just I this is the first time we've actually ever talked about a major alteration and building code that we like trigger for example sustainability we've talked about like what would be that thing that triggers new code right

and I don't know if we could double down on that but those are kind of two questions in one so well I mean if we're talking about a major alteration. We're It's an addition and it would have to be at least 500 square feet or larger in order for these codes to kick in. So, how many of those do we have within the city? Not too many. A lot of the work that goes on in the city are interior alterations which are exempt from this code. Mhm.

Um, so now granted there's a lot of permits that we do issue that uh aren't considered a major alteration. They're roof replacements and their siding replacements. And clearly those are uh we we have some established triggers for, you know, one what what part of that parcel falls within class one or class two, what what's the the nature of the project that we're doing? And then subsequently we, you know, we'll, you know, where we didn't in the past used to have to review these over-the-c counter permits. That's typically what we call them because they they require very little staff review. Um, that that's going to change and it will either be uh taking up more time on behalf of staff, which you know is it just is what it is. Do we do we check those types of permits in and review them through through the city departments or is that something that's that myself or one of my staff can can you know vet before they issue a permit but um I don't know if I was direct enough about your question it was speaking about the negative if you don't mind uh the building code already kind of does that chapter one of the actual IBC so that's kind of where the IWOI code and this does not match uh whatsoever when it comes to this international wildland urban airspace code. That's kind of where they took it though from was that the president set by the international building

and we're talking things that are are exempt from permit for instance. And and you know we we rarely issue fence permits. The reality is is nobody builds a fence more than seven feet tall. If they do they get a variance uh through planning

through planning commission. Um, and when, uh, even when we do, uh, the only other fences that we tend to run into that require some staff, uh, oversight are fences that are in the front of the properties that deal with sight lines and such, you know, for engineering purposes. But, um, yeah, you know, it it will be a bit of a change and education will and notification will be very important on this part of it, especially, uh, for, you know, our contractors. um a lot of the roofing contractors and those those folks um they're not going to have a clue. So,

and just really quickly, just to reiterate, this is code that is being driven by the state by legislation. We do not have flexibility to say we want to make massive changes to it unless we take the core code that they've created and we make it even more restrictive. So that's why we have language here that is maybe uncommon or unfamiliar to us because it's not code we wrote. It's code that we're adopting that's been written by a group that got together to create a statewide wooi code for this for for Colorado. Patty, did you have a question?

Yeah, I do. Um thanks. Um so it's only triggered by additions of 500 square feet or you know that certain criteria. Um, how many of those do we typically see a year? And how many like the differences in the maps like the the the state map versus our map? Are we talking in like we we'd see one additional one per year or 20 or like what

I mean I don't I don't put my hands on every one of those residential permits. Um, Robert Marsh does, my plan reviewer. I I do end up seeing a lot of it just because I'm out in the field doing inspections. Uh but I would say um I could get you a more direct number after and and just shoot you an email, but if I had to guess, it'd be in the 10 to 15 range addition wise, okay? And roof replacement wise,

a lot more roof replacements, a lot more uh not so much siding, but it does come about. And the reality is is that uh some of our policies and procedures are are basically in alignment with this code as it's written with regards to the triggers.

Uh we look at roof replacements and if you're doing a roof replacement where you're you're uh uh you're not affecting more than 25% and we call that a repair and that's not required to be permitted. You're allowed to make those repairs on your structure without being permitted to do so. Uh and the same would go for um sighting for u replacing the exterior cladding. We set those levels to say look if you're going to be replacing more than 25% of the roof, the whole roof has to be replaced. And in this case, um that obviously does trigger some additional code requirements uh to meet a class A requirement and it it it will be more expensive. There's no doubt. I did I took the time to put together or get a little bit of information from the web as it relates to what it means to have class A roof on your on your home. Uh and typically the majority of the roofs here in Golden are what is a class C roof. It's an architectural shingle that has fiberglass. It's fiberglass reinforced and then it has a 15 pound felt as the underllayment. to meet a class A requirement. You still need the the architectural shingle that's reinforced with fiberglass, but now you need to have a um uh your your underllayment can no longer be a 15lb felt. It has to be uh an underllayment that meets the standard. And there's a couple of different standards that has to meet ASME 108 and UL790 standards. And they just basically deal with fire fire type stuff. Um, and what that means is that in Golden, we already require ice and water shield on the eaves of your homes to prevent ice daming and things of that nature. Um, the entire roof surface would have to be covered with ice and water shield in order to meet a class A requirement. And if you want to compare prices, 15 pound

felt runs approximately 6 to 8 cents per square foot. Whereas your your ice and water shield and Grace is just happens to be a common brand name. Uh that it's about 90 cents to $130 a square foot. So uh and that's for the entire roof surface. Yeah. Um thanks. I just have some clarifying questions that hope we can then move on because um we don't have unlimited amounts of times. Um the first is the applicability which has been discussed about the things that's only for the moderate or for the moderate and low identified on the map. Yes. So yes ma'am. So the applicability is to those who are identified in either moderate or what?

Moderate or low. So it's all of the properties. Okay. Um the second is um we have a choice of maps which we can do um under state law. We can take state map or more restrictive. What I'm reading is in the code the modifications because we're allowed to go more restrictive other than designating agencies. Um the only is the vinyl fencing. Is that the only code change from the state code? So there were a number be more restrictive for Golden.

Yeah. So, yes, ma'am. Good question. Uh, so there were some vegetation uh requirements that I placed into here based off of what Jefferson County has done. They've eliminated junipers within 30 ft of the home considering how hot they burn. That was a good decision made. So, the vegetation in class 2 has been adopted straight from Jeff Jeff. Okay. So, that would be an additional modification we'd be adopting into our golden Yes. Correct. And that that lives in the Golden Wildfire Resiliency Code. Yes, ma'am. Okay. And uh Yes, sir. Go ahead. Yeah, sorry. I just think, you know, it'd be helpful, you know, since we're gonna have to vote on this to look at the state code and then very clearly detail out whatever addition, you know, whatever additional restrictions we

That's a great point and I've already done it for you. Uh there's a document in there that has a little abbreviation like little letter abbreviation next to every single code item uh that says if it's G, it's Gold Wildfire Resiliency Code. Difference F is from our fire code. I just replaced what the CWRC had with what we've already adopted. Um, also B for what we already had in our building code. So, things of that nature. So, you can actually go line by line to see what and then J for Jefferson County what they what they're looking at doing. So, and then everything else is from the the Colorado Wild. Okay. So, we have Yep. You have that 113 page document. I've got to go back and look, counselor. Yeah.

It's a it's a long document that we have in there. So that that's helpful because we will have to come back and discuss this again. Um so we can look for that. I am um in agreement with Ghard of the

uncertainty of financial impact once this is implemented statewide and what it will mean for property owners in particularly regarding their insurance policies. And so, um, given that, uh, the, um, the uncertainty and the law around insurance doesn't even start until this starts, um, I'd prefer to go on the more, um, the fewer properties in the early adoption of the map and then revisit um, once we see that statewide because, as we know, there are always lots and lots of unintended consequences when the state decides to do something statewide. And I'd rather not catch up catch our property owners up in that mix. Um if we have an opportunity to take a little bit of a wait and see and um and then revisit um after.

Sure. Sounds great. Um, and also just to your point, counselor, uh, the ordinance that, uh, that legal team has worked with me and Scott Greer on, uh, all those we're adopting it by reference, the CWRC by reference, just like we do our other codes, our fire bill code. So, all the amendments in there are what's different from the CWRC. So, that's a really clean way of looking at it, I guess, if you wanted to look at it that way more easily.

I appreciate that you you'll be coming back. Um, I'm right now in support of map number C, the ESPW, to create another acronym, the enhanced structure protection wildfire map. Um, it's recommended. Um, I I just don't think we have the luxury of wait and see. I think it's important to not kick the can down the road even more when it comes to what we need to do in Golden to protect our structures, our homes, specifically our homes that are backing up to open space and other combustibles. So, those are my that's that's where I am right now. I just have a quick question about map number C. If you wanted to to put it up, you probably

don't even need to look at it. There are numerous homes in these neighborhoods where the line are you okay Patty? Okay. The line between class one and class two is someone's property. They are class one on one side of their house and class two on the other. How would you address that? And additionally, how are we addressing the split of class one and class two in our city open space? It's a great question. So I'll take the first one first. Uh so if a parcel at the state map level was cut in half by moderate and low, you have to take the most restrictive. So it becomes moderate.

If any amount and the direction I received from the board was if any amount of a color touches an individual's property parcel, then that entire parcel gets colorcoded that that color. So that hopefully clears that up just a little bit

in consideration open space to your second question. Um this map that the state created has nothing to do with open space. It it has to do with that and and don't get me wrong, I don't I'm not a big fan of it either, but it doesn't take a look at any of the gulches that run through into our city that would carry fire uh into nearby our properties. Um, and it doesn't take in consideration, for example, like Kenny Run. Um, it would not though affect how we're treating those areas within our city. That is a part of our CWPP process along with the other processes that uh parks and wreck and forestry are dealing with uh for wildfire mitigation. I hope that clarifies that. It does. Thank you.

Okay. Yeah. I uh actually am in support of map number one for now as well. Uh there's nothing in here that precludes a homeowner from hardening their property and I would just encourage that people do so.

Um I think that's the first step. Um so I'm in favor of that map and I will also say that given the example of Marshall fire and you know very low fuels and it was the embers you know hardening your property is has got to be number one because there's going to be embers. they're going to get into the urban areas which are not even part of this map. So, I just can't emphasize enough that it comes down to homeowners. Um, that's going to make the difference. Putting this in place is a requirement by the state, but that's not going to move the needle. It's going to move the needle. It's people hardening the properties. And and to your point, counselor, we've already had permits come in for people up off um the France and they knew this was coming and they all the improvements that they've made to their home were specific to hardening. So, it's it is an education aspect uh to get people to understand the value in this code. So, I know we're running out of time and so uh we're going to bring this back. Uh we will have it as an ordinance. So, we will have two um opportunities and we will have as opposed to our first reading being on consent, which is our standard. We will have that as an open conversation so we can continue to talk. Um I've heard from several of you with regards to which map you prefer so we can have a focus in terms of what we're putting forward. But I'd like to hear Emily, Sandra, Patty who's stepped away. Um I haven't heard from you all. So that will help us with direction.

I like the wait and see method. Um yeah, just keep it simple. Best I the same financial consideration concern. On the one hand, we should all be concerned and doing hardening like councelor Cameron recommended. Um but from the state perspective, starting with the the low and slow, okay, until we understand that better. Okay, that's helpful. That's all we need. Everybody has what they need. Okay, great. Great. All right. Thank you all. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Um I we have run over a bit. Um are folks okay coming back at 7 or would they like to come back a few minutes before? Can we have dinner faster?

Um, thanks for being patient. We needed a little extra time for our study session uh this evening. Uh, but we'll get our regular business meeting uh started. It is uh February 10th, 2026. And let's start by standing for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next is roll call. Connect present. Councelor here. Councelor Evans here. Mayor Wber

here. Mayor Prov here. Councelor F here. Councelor Kinski here. Mayor, you have a quum.

Thank you. Um, having received no uh changes to the agenda, the agenda is approved as has been presented. Next up, we have a public comment period. It is our only public comment period for this evening. And um I'll just note that we did receive public comment via email and open up the floor to anybody who would like to speak to council tonight. Um you're welcome to the podium um and have three minutes to share your thoughts. Nobody's jumping up. I'll close the public comment period and we will move on. Um, if there's any council or staff response to the public comment that was received via email, give the opportunity now. All right, we'll keep moving. Uh, next up we have council staff comments and new business opportunity to provide updates, share information uh, with council. I will start at the end.

Perfect. Um, they'll probably stress on it too, but uh, we have a ward one, one, ward two, and district one meeting on February 23rd, which is Monday, at Wrigley at 5. So, come meet and greet and hang out with councelor Fowl and then also councelor Bri and I. So, see you there. Uh just one quick I wanted to just highlight February 25th is Hunger-Free Golden's uh empty bowls event. So now's the time to go to hungerfree golden.org and uh click on the right buttons and you can uh get your ticket which is free and then make a donation at the event uh as you fill your empty bowl. The community marketing board met this morning. We did choose a contractor to help us design our strategic plan moving forward. We also discussed the welcome center. The welcome center presented two different statements of work with two different prices. We had a great conversation and we went back to the welcome center with a collaborative combined approach of a different option and a different cost to the city. So, we will see what the welcome center board comes back with and hopefully we can still partner with them.

Thanks for that update. Um, okay, a couple things. Um first uh coffee with the counselor. We had um a very successful cookies with the counselor last night um at the community center. We had Ben Molen from Kors and Anne Bley, public works director to talk about um the Clear Creek water and all things Kors. It was very well attended. I appreciate everyone who came. Our next one is March 7th at 10 a.m. at the community center and we'll be talking about community engagement then. So please join us then. Also wanted to highlight that applications are open for boards and commissions. So, if you're looking for ways to get more involved with the city, um check out the boards and commissions, the vacancies, and um apply for a seat.

Yeah, I was hoping to give an update on Gura uh Golden Urban Renewal, but due to a lack of quorum, we did not meet last night. So, I would again encourage people to apply for new boards and commissions uh as a way to ensure that they are engaged in the community. uh what we were not able to do was move forward on a grant program for people who lost uh businesses who lost money in the URAS um during the PSPS in December. So I assume that will come back to us uh next month, but please look at boards and commissions uh through city of golden.gov.net.net.

Thank you. Uh, I'll third voice here. We we love applicants. I'm excited to be part of that subcommittee and um helping with the some of the decisioning, the interview questions or updates to interview questions. So, please, we need that community focus. So, that was my my topic. I might as to start this way sometimes my taken.

All right, we can mix it up. Um, a couple of things. Um I'm not going to speak uh about Golden and Golden because our city manager um I think will share about that. Um and um just just a huge thank you to everyone involved in all of the efforts um on such a large event and significant event. So a lot of volunteers, a lot of staff time, all the departments um really thank you for an excellent job. Um, the two things that I wanted to uh just share with council over the last two weeks, I I did provide testimony at the state legislature. Um, and they voted in direct opposition to my testimony. So, um, I'm not doing great. Uh, convincing anybody. Um but it's already moved not just out of committee but out of the house and that is House Bill 26101 which is the bill that allows um certain entities, organizations, public schools, uh state universities, housing authorities to build what they want irrespective of local zoning. Um so that passed very quickly out of the house. It goes on to the Senate. So I'll continue to try to engage in that um over in the Senate. And then the second one was just yesterday and that is our representatives bill. Representative Tuton uh ran a bill, House Bill uh 261036. Um wouldn't directly um be some a tool that Golden would potentially consider for housing. Um but very important tool for some of the mountain uh communities and that is a the opportunity to go to the voters to ask for a vacancy tax um to be able to use that funding to fund affordable workforce housing in their community. Um and that failed to get out of committee. So, um, yeah. So, we're not doing so great on the housing bills, um, but we'll we'll keep following and, um, considering the impacts, potentially

positive, negative, uh, to the city. The second thing I want to mention also housing related um, is just to share that there seems to be a lot of interest from developers and the RFQ process that the state is has put out there for the land at the Lookout Mountain Youth Center. Um, so that RFQ went out. It is due next month, I think. I don't remember the exact date. There are a lot of developers interested. Um, I have had conversations with several of them. Highle conversations where they're seeking to understand our community, um, our housing needs, um, that type of thing and directing them if they have specific questions about our zoning, our process, you know, anything like that to the city team. So um just wanted to be open about that that I I am taking their meetings. We are having conversation about Golden as a community but any specifics about um you know our our process uh for development is being referred to staff

and with that we'll move on any Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, so as you mentioned, I wanted to take just a minute and do a little bit of a recap with regards to Golden and Golden and and share kudos. Um, Meredith uh, in particular, our communications and special events director, put in just an inordinate amount of time and energy into uh, this event. As you all know, uh last year's event, uh had a number of challenges, some that were way outside of our control in terms of uh very serious accidents on two, uh highways, uh that that caused a whole lot of rerouted traffic to come through at exactly the wrong time in Golden. Uh but we took that feedback and we really tried to to work to resolve that issue and a number of other challenges that we'd seen as Golden and Golden's uh grew in popularity and as it became sort of a social media phenomena and uh Meredith uh really spearheaded that effort um along with uh Diane Tyri and Derek Shiml our special events and our community marketing manager uh Claire who is here as well our management fellow was a big part of it. She was running around the event um a bunch as well. Uh but there were uh months and months of planning that went into this before the event and I just want to give them some public recognition for what they did. Um we also had at the event a whole lot of folks from public works working uh to make sure that we had uh roads closed properly, that we had barricades in place, that we made that as safe an event as we could. um along with our fire department and our uh police department as well participating. Uh and then I think at least 70 uh some odd volunteers that uh came out to help with the event. Um just again a tremendous improvement um over years past and by

far and away the biggest uh Golden and Golden event that we've had. Uh we are we believe it's somewhere uh in the neighborhood of 16,000 people that came for the event. Uh something over 5,000 in terms of the number of dogs. Uh we uh I believe the count was just under 4,200 people that rolled the shuttle uh as well. And so again, just a a massive amount of people for a community of our size. Um, and again, I think so many of the things that that crew did to spread the event out, to spread the time out, to address uh traffic, to address security, uh to provide different things for people to do rather than just standing in the middle of the street with their dog and taking a photo once uh was really just brilliant. Um and they also brought in uh sponsorships to the event to help to cover costs that are associated with running something of this scale and to professionalize it to a different degree. Um and the business community was so involved and so much uh so grateful I think um for the success of the event as well in particular in light of what happened in December with the power shut off and the impact that that had on our local businesses. Um during really what is one of the busiest times of the year for them to be able to have an event like this where we were seeing again lines out the door of most of the storefronts of most of the restaurants throughout the course of the day. Uh we talked a little bit ourselves about the fact that folks were in town for days prior to the event itself and then stayed uh in some cases beyond the event. So really a great opportunity to boost the economy uh locally. And so again, just kudos uh across the board uh to the team that put it together. So that's it.

Thank you. Agreed. Any other updates? Are you coming to give us an update? Okay. Yay.

I just wanted to provide a quick update. I know many people have noticed that our videos haven't been um showing on the website the same way that they have in the past. A piece of our equipment went down that directs the cameras and the audio. So to kind of work around that, we have a video camera in the back of the room and we've been streaming onto YouTube, which still has a live link on our website that people can watch council meetings and uh planning commission meetings live on the website. Similar to before, they're also posted on our YouTube page and posted in the Granicus place where meetings are usually posted. So, all other meetings are posted on Brandicus the day after they air. We've been looking at what piece of equipment we need to buy to replace. It's been a little bit more complicated because of buying new equipment for the new building and what piece of equipment will talk to the new equipment and our current equipment. I won't go into more detail than that. It's not very interesting, but um that's why it's been a little bit more complicated, but we've found the equipment that we need. We're in the process of purchasing it. It shouldn't be much longer, but we're kind of working around it as needed. So, just wanted to provide that update.

Thank you. Yeah, and that's great. I didn't realize that the live option via YouTube was available. So, thanks for that update. All right, we will move on in our agenda. Uh up next we have uh consent matters and we'll have opportunity to discuss but let's get a motion on the table regarding consent matters. Move adoption of consent matters as presented. Second. Thank you. Um comments, thoughts before we vote? A lot of items in there. Yeah.

Um thank you. I want to I've got a couple questions about the housing needs assessment update and so I'm wondering if we could talk about that for a minute. Um so the the addendum the addit the what we're voting on today is just the addendum to the housing needs assessment to comply with state law. Is that correct? Yeah. Okay. And um correct. Okay. How often is the whole assessment? This was it was approved before I was on council, so I'm not um it is my first time seeing the whole thing. How often will it be evaluated and updated?

Yeah, I don't know that we have a schedule for our own uh needs assessment. The again, there's state law that was passed after the adoption of the Golden Housing Needs Assessment that requires every five years.

Every six years, thank you, Sarah. uh every six years that you have a new plan or a revised plan adopted and submitted to the state. Uh what we were trying to do was use our plan that we created before the state legislation came into place, submit that to the state to meet that compliance requirement. Uh when we did that submission, they identified a few uh items that we needed to uh add to the plan and that's what this addendum represents. uh there's no change to uh the policy, there's no change to our approach, there's no change to our strategy as it relates to uh housing within Golden. Um but this was an effort for us again to be in compliance with that state law.

And is the six years counted from when we initially passed it or from when this addendum was added? For the state, it will be from the point at which we submitted to the state. And so I would say that's last year, April 25. Yeah. Thanks Sarah. Okay. Um and then so you you said that the add agenda won't change the goals or the strategies or the actions or anything like that. It is truly just more reporting. Correct.

Okay. All right. And then um April 2025 plus six years. Are we planning that's when we have to have it done by is there given the changes in you know um movement in and out and um economic drivers and employment in Golden is there a desire to update it before we are statutoily required to

that will be a council direction so at this point we've not received direction from council to suggest we should go back and revisit and redo the plan u I think that it it would not be a surprise to any of you uh uh on council that although we've um identified action steps and we've made um progress in certain areas, there is a lot that is left to be done. Uh and so the need for an update to the needs assessment is probably not necessary right now. Uh but again uh at some point in the future we would expect that council will want us to to go back and revisit uh the the numbers and the calculations and the expectations. Uh but that's not something that we have on the uh work plan for 2026 certainly.

Yeah. So just to add on to that, um during my time on planning commission when we were doing the comprehensive plan, which I know we haven't seen yet, we kept talking about the housing needs assessment being refreshed and it was constantly brought up and given that we have a lot of documents that do relate to this, I was a little surprised to see that we didn't have any updated data other than the needs for like accessibility and the addendum different materials. I think it'd be really useful because we've seen a lot of change since 2022. I mean, just in the short time I've been here and I feel like we keep seeing that and it's been rapid. I just I don't know if we can extend on this now. I just think I think it would be useful to point out for future discussions because yeah, this is impactful to us.

Council Cameron,

um I want to follow up as well and say um we will have to review our commitment for Prop 123 uh monies that we will apply for. We have we've got a target of 26 units per year for three years. When we reassess that, that might be a good time to sort of check in. But I will just uh say despite the fact that I would like to see the numbers updated, we already had a target of 3,000 over 10 years, which was daunting and undoable. If the numbers drop to 2,000 in 10 years, it'll still be daunting and undoable. So, I don't think it will fundamentally change the kinds of actions we take. And so, um, I'm actually going to agree with the city manager that this is actually just about getting in compliance with state requirements and that's basically it. Redoing the study isn't going to change fundamentally what we have to do. So, that's my

and councelor Cameron and I agree often despite the tone of that response.

Um, and and I I agree with that statement as well. I also want to point out that since um the city of Golden did did ours, Jefferson County has now done one. So that is a bigger lens that is inclusive of Golden because we know housing needs is not specific to our city boundaries. So Jefferson County has done one. Um Dr. Cobb has done a housing study with data for the entire metro region that they cover and so that has happened subsequent to ours to give that again that bigger lens. And then just um uh just to mention I don't I received a message we're going to have our first meeting at some point here um but I am serving as the city representative to to the um department of local affairs um regional planning roundt commission and so that regional planning um through Dola has opportunity to submit um you know requests for funding and for different things for regional collaboration around this issue. So there's a lot of things that have happened um that affect what we're doing here in Golden and opportunities for funding or additional collaboration. Um so I think that um you know there's things happening um beyond just the letter of what's in you know the plan. And and one other note uh Sarah veain who's sitting in the back uh also also reminded me that uh at the end of 2027 we will have a housing action plan that is also due

uh and so that will have a public input process uh and that will do some updating that will help to inform the the needs assessment as well. So so there is some more action coming a lot of things. Y thank you. Okay. Anything else on any of the consent matters um for discussion before we take a vote? Yes.

Um one quick followup. This is actually the first time in this addendum that we saw the need for 56 supportive housing units. So, I will definitely want to see what the county does around that and um sooner than later, maybe before the end of 27, we we see, you know, what actions we want to take around supportive housing because that's the first time we've seen that. Um and I just want to thank staff for answering my questions around the stream gauge and funding of that and and our commitments. So, I just want to thank staff for that. That's it. Thanks. All right. We have a motion and a second. Um, all those in favor, please say I. I. I.

Any opposed?

All right. The consent matters are approved as presented. Next up, it happens to be one of my favorite things. Uh, the National Community Survey results. Um, I um I really do enjoy enjoy when we do this every three years. So, well, hi all. Um, Claire Noak Management Fellow. I am not giving the presentation tonight. We actually have an expert with us. Um Sonia Whiting Whiting. Um she's here from Pulco and the National Research Center. She is their director of data and insights. Um so you are in very capable hands and she's going to share all of those interesting insights. So yes, I am the executive vice president of data and insights at Pulkco and I've been working with local governments to do research for 20 years and about eight years before that helping local or different state agencies with um economics. Um so I'm very excited to be here. So I'm glad you were excited mayor as well. I love data and love it when I meet people who love data. Um, I'd first like to thank Claire and Meredith because they were provided so much thoughtful feedback in this whole process and also acknowledge my colleague Jason Newire who did the bulk of the work um and then sent me to do the present presentation as I'm local. So just a little bit about PCO for those that might be new to us. Um we provide tools to empower resident voices and visualize community metrics to support strategic planning, budgeting and performance tracking. The uh NRC is the research arm of PCO. We started in 1994

in Pulco or in in Boulder and merged with PCO about seven years ago to bring technology plus our survey expertise together. We're well known for our national benchmarking surveys such as the national community survey which you would implement every three years. Before we dive into the results, I just want to emphasize the variety of ways these results can be used. Most commonly, jurisdictions are using it to monitor trends in resident opinion over time. inform those budgeting and strategic plans, assess community needs as they change over time, and measure the impacts of policies and programs that you put in place in between those surveys. The National Community Survey or the NCS specifically is a five-page comprehensive survey. It's used to assess resident opinion about community and local government. Um the NCS questions are categories into these 10 facets of community livability to provide a holistic picture of Golden from the perspective of residents. The facets were identified through extensive survey research and the work that we've done with communities like yours over the last 30 years. So these survey items u there's there's many many survey items related to each of these 10 facets. I won't go through every single one of them, but I'm going to give you a broad overview tonight. Note that the facets do align with with your government departments and so your staff can easily find the data that's kind of most relevant for them to be tracking over time. I'm going to go into a bunch of details here because how you conduct a survey really matters. Um we representative of your community and that you can trust this data. So we select our sample without bias, over sample multif family housing, and make

statistical corrections for common response disparities such as older adults always respond more than younger adults in every survey we ever do. Um, and we start with the US Postal Service list of all your households in relevant zip codes and then we compare it to a GIS boundary file to make sure that they are in your community and then select 3,000 addresses randomly to receive that survey. We send a postcard invitation first and that's to an online survey and then it's followed week a week later by with a paper survey and that also has that QR code URL if they want to go online and use it as a reminder. but as also as a paper if they have challenges using um responding digitally or they just don't enjoy it. It comes with a postage paid envelope so they can easily just send that right back. You had a great response. You had 593 surveys completed and a margin of error of plus or minus 4%. That is better than best practices the what we're aiming for. So that was great news and um a really engaged community. So once the data is in the demographic respon or the demographics of the respondents are compared to the most recent census and American community survey and then we actually statistically wait so that we can um correct for that over over representation of older adults for instance rather of of younger adults so that the results of your community o your results overall reflect your community correctly. Additionally, everyone in the community might want to participate. So, we uh separately starting November 6th publicized a communitywide open participation survey and 90 or 86 people responded. Those results are actually in a is separate part of the report and I won't be discussing them at this meeting but you can see them online and we think

of them often as just the opinions of those who are a little bit more engaged. So, one of the advantages of participating in the national community survey is that you can compare your ratings to those across the country and then you can also select custom benchmarks to compare to. So, we have about 400 communities in our database and 35 in the front range. And so, you are compared to both of those groups. So, on to the results. There's a ton of information in the report as I mentioned including a lot of crosstabulations like geography and demographics and we won't cover it all here but I'm going to point out main themes and then invite you to dig deeper in the report. So first I'm going to show you some highlevel results. In the survey we have two questions that ask directly about these larger facets of community livability. The first one asks about the quality of each. Um the quality qu just to orient you to this chart. The quality questions were asked on a four-point scale where the respondent could choose excellent, good, fair or poor. We consider excellent and good to be positive ratings. And for ease of presentation and comparison, we just show the excellent plus good here and throughout the presentation. We also show comparison to the national benchmark and with the color of the bar charts and if there's difference over time we actually have a little arrow beside them. Not there's none on this this slide but there will be in future and we also have a little arrow up for those custom benchmarks from comparing to the front range. So the second question uses these same broad aspects of community livability and it asks it's centered on importance. So we ask what the community thinks you should focus on in the next two years.

We ask about the quality and then the importance because it's a it's then we can we can create a matrix so that you can look at if there's any check and see if there's anything that is maybe of lower quality but really high importance. That might be a focus area that you might want to look into. Whereas there might be things that you have really high quality, they're a bit of lower importance, you can probably stay the course. or if you were in a time when you really had to shave something off in a budget, then those are areas that you might consider in terms of what your community is valuing. So, here is that comparison. Um, and you can see it's just one way to interpret the data. It's kind of small and it is in your report. So if you want to look more deeply but in this case the only really large gap where the quality is less is smaller than the importance is in mobility. Um and from the previous slide we we saw that um mobility was at had a 62 overall transportation had a 62% rating for excellent good and that was similar to the benchmark. So while there is a gap, you are doing fairly well in mobility. We'll get into a few more details on mobility in a few slides. So continuing on on the kind of higher level, we have 123 survey items that you can be compared to on the benchmarks. Um and in this case, 40 received ratings that were higher than the national benchmarks. So that is really good. um and 79 received similar ratings. Four received lower ratings. Ratings are considered similar if they are within 10 points and different if they are more than 10 points either positive or negative. Lower than the benchmark were cost of living, ease of public parking, availability of affordable quality housing and attracting people from diverse backgrounds. much higher and

there was so many higher I'm not going to name them all but much higher than the benchmark which means it's 20 points or more um were related to Golden as a place to visit and recreate looking at those custom benchmarks which were the 35 Front Range communities of those 12 123 items 69 received higher ratings so that's a really excellent result because the Front Range are pretty high quality communities. So, and um 53 received similar ratings and only one received a lower rating and that lower rating was for ease of public parking. Um much higher were adult education opportunities, yard waste pickup and items related to recreation and tourism. Once again, then a really good benchmark is yourself over time, very important one. And so we compared you to the 22 2022 survey. Five received higher ratings, 104 similar, and 14 received lower ratings. So for the most part, your trends are really stable. Um five at the um sorry the results um I should note that the results were statistically different if they were 5.8% or more different from last year. So they can be somewhat small changes but that is a statistical difference. Higher than 2022 were aspects of safety and public transportation and lower were related to economic conditions, utilities and governance. So on to some key findings just digging a little bit deeper on what stood out to us. But note again there's lots of additional data. So, please dig in and send any questions. So, to start, Golden is a great place to live. Nine and 10 residents gave

excellent or good ratings to Golden as a place to live, the quality of life in the city, and the overall image of the city. These were higher than the national and Front Range benchmarks. Most residents plan to remain in the city in the next five years, and most would recommend living in the city to someone if they asked. Golden also feels very safe to residents. Almost every respondent almost every respondent felt safe in their neighborhood and downtown during the day. Almost all felt safe from violent crime and property crime. A few more um were concerned about safety from fire, flood, natural disaster, but still 70% were saying that they felt at least somewhat safe. and safety from property crime saw an improvement from 2022 and was also above the front range benchmark. So those are those little arrows that I noted earlier. Um looking at services related to safety, nine and 10 h residents were happy with fire and EMS services. Around eight and 10 gave good marks to animal control, police and sheriff's services and crime prevention. Animal control and crime prevention were higher than the front rage benchmark and crime prevention increased from 2022. Like many places in the country, the economy is a concern to residents. Overall economic health, Golden has a place to work and economic development had better ratings than other front range communities. But along with employment opportunities and cost of living, oh sorry, but along with employment opportunities, cost of living saw a decline in rating from 2022, only one in seven residents had positive ratings for the cost of living and one in 10 the availability of affordable

quality housing. These were below the national benchmarks, but they were similar to the front range. Your natural environment and recreation opportunities really shine in these results. Um, nearly all residents gave great ratings to the overall quality of the natural environment in Golden Cleanliness, water resources, open space and preservation of natural areas. And there were higher they were also higher than the national and bench and front range benchmarks except for the bottom air quality which was similar but again quite a high rating of 75%. Similarly, resident nearly all residents were happy with recreational opportunities, facilities, classes, parks, trails in Golden. All ratings were higher than both the national benchmark and most were above the Front Range benchmark as well. So residents did indicate that transportation was of high importance to them and there that overall rating was moderate in quality. However, many aspects do have pretty good ratings. So walking and biking was considered easy in Golden and easier nationally and in the front range. Car travel was similar to other places with moderate ratings. Public parking was of concern as noted before. and public transportation was similar to benchmarks but did increase from 2022. Many aspects of mobility services were above the bench national and front range benchmarks including street cleaning, snow removal, sidewalk maintenance, and street repair.

The survey also included a few questions that were custom made for you about emerging topics. Um the first question asked about possible additional actions specific on specific community priorities um and how important they were to the residents. So topping the list was bike and pedestrian safety and housing affordability. 42% said those were essential and seven and 10 said it was at least very important. Less essential but still important were small business support and public transportation. At least twothirds said that each of these was very important and almost no one said it was not ill. The next question asked about how often residents went downtown for a variety of activities. Highest on the list was visiting parks, recreating near Clear Creek, and eating and drinking downtown. And then on the second page, we have some of the lower ones. still um using downtown services was still pretty high with 66% um doing it at least every once every month and lower were or least commonly attended were the special events both those that are regularly occurring and those that are annual which that makes sense for especially the annual you can't go a monthly. Um, so in summary of this summary, uh, Golden is a very valued place to live. It's safe with great natural amenities, easy to navigate on foot and bike. Folks have some economic concerns that parallel other communities, and there's areas for improvement in housing, transit, and parking.

Hi, I just wanted to jump in a little bit on this presentation just to draw council's attention to some of the strategic plan, which is obviously our next item on the agenda, but just wanted to call out some of the projects that have to do with the um kind of topic areas that you heard a lot from in the survey. So, u mobility and transportation was one that came up a lot. And so we have several projects that have to do with that including the orc card expansion, highway 93, um alternatives design and the complete street on Ford. And then small business support, the community marketing strategic plan that councelor Vitri mentioned earlier, um wayfinding signage, comprehensive plan update, and um housing affordability, um funding housing for all, regional homelessness projects, healthy housing project, something like that. And then environmental quality in parks, lots of projects with that. forest canopy study, um Tony Gramps's park improvements, sustainability policies and grant requests, um universal recycling ordinance, energy benchmarking, um safety and emergency preparedness. You heard a lot about that in the survey. So that really circles back to our wildfire management resiliency strategy and some of those community um engagement projects as well. So, just wanted to kind of make a tiein to the two together. And with that, I think we'll take questions on the survey and happy to answer anything. Council House,

thank you. Um, I'm sure there's questions or thoughts. Um, a quick question. I think it's easy because I think you've already done it for me because I flagged it would be interesting to see which of the strategic initiatives have to do with uh parking given parking the lowest number on here or one of the lowest numbers on here and so uh I think adding that to a bullet would be good. I'm happy to do that.

Yeah. Um, my takeaway when I first looked at it was, wow, the number of younger people who did the survey was so low that you had to, you know, normalize it back to our demographics. Could you at least answer was the amount that you had to move old people down and young people up in terms of waiting um, comparable to what you've seen in other places or are we an outlier with more old less young.

No, I would say you're definitely comparable with other places. Um, younger folks do respond in much lower levels. Um, so we have in some communities started to do more outreach on the the you know I I mentioned that we had the open participation survey. Um we have in some communities started to do a little more outreach there and use statistical waiting to actually blend in some from non the non-random survey to have a little bit more of the younger adults. But overall um even though they're responding in lower uh lower numbers than we would like than we would prefer um there are there are studies that have shown that the with the waiting we're still representing the community well. So studies where they have like larger federal um surveys that they do nationally that where they're they're compare they're basically comparing like the the federal government or these federal surveys have a lot larger budget to make sure that they actually you know can pay folks to participate and get much higher numbers um and then they compare some smaller survey efforts asking the same questions and get comparable results. So we feel pretty competent confident that while we're not getting the numbers that we would like from the younger folks that they are represented well in the overall balance. I heard all that and I understand all that, but I would be open to having you guys look at those opt-in surveys and see whether

they're comparable or not because it I I didn't dig into those details, but um we often say we we're getting the data because it matches, but um I don't know. I'd like to see those numbers come up in all of our social media. Anyway, so how do we get those younger folks?

I would also definitely invite you to when you look at the online survey results there are you can look at the results by um age group so you can see where they differ. I was looking at before I came in and there wasn't a overall there wasn't a strong difference in a lot of areas. I know despite in mobility older adults did have higher ratings for transit and for parking probably more time to do it maybe um but but there weren't you know so so you can kind of look at where those difference might be

yeah I don't want to beat the topic but I would like a link to those online results because I don't think we got that in this we didn't get a link to the live results thank you and I I know that has come up every year about the having to wait uh across our age demographic. So, at least comparatively across the every three-year results, um it seems like we've had to

and I say the waiting is the best practice and we always do it like even when we have a stronger amount of younger adults, it's probably not going to be in the same proportion. And there, you know, there's other groups like um renters also are a lower responders for the most part. So, we're trying to with waiting make sure that we're correcting for several demographics. Yes. Uh similar question or observation on the on the demographics. It's really interesting that so the the target that is like basically the percentage of um the adult community that fits into that demographic. Is that correct? Am I reading that right? Um I'm I'm not sure.

So on the I'm looking at the unweed, weighted, and target and Okay. Yes. Yeah. Okay. All right. It's really interesting that men 18 to 34 make up 27% of our demographics. Women 18 to 34 make up 13%. So in the that's exactly the opposite. Yeah. And I mean it makes sense. We've got, you know, school minds.

But the 18 to 20 18 to 34 men who make up 27% had a 6% response or 6% weighted unweighted. So they had they had to be weighted a whole lot more than any of the other any of the other demographic um groups. Is that unusual? Um definitely younger men are the lowest responders in every survey. So it's not unusual in that sense. Probably the proportion that you have in your population is unusual. waiting waiting that waiting.

So waiting like giving so it's it's essentially saying that we're giving weight to like a five point weight to that person for the most part to get them into up to seven. That is not that unusual for some groups to be weighted that much. That's it's over a quarter of our population though the on the weighted and target. So yeah, that feels a little disproportionate and I I understand it's best practices. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. But it is shocking to me that so few people have that much um influence. It's like the Senate in Wyoming. Yep.

Um I had a few thoughts and um it's not questions at all, just thoughts. Um the first was uh it's really interesting to be able to see the movement in numbers and reflect on the programs that the city engaged in that had direct results. So between the 2022 so property crime when we look back to 2022 there's a lot of autotheft and the golden police department engaging in the metro area auto theft task force that had a fancy name I don't remember. Um the fact that we had so much movement in the positive direction uh in the three years uh which we saw by the reduction in autothefts. Seeing those results is really um is really interesting to see how putting forth more effort in an area uh can can really change outcomes. Uh the second one was on the transit. uh we didn't have the orcart running um in 2022 and now it's been in place and running and successfully and so that access to more transit those numbers trending up um significantly was really great to see. The third observation is nothing to do with trends and just the fact that we continue to have low numbers in affordable quality child care and preschool. Um it is not an area we've talked a lot about in the city. We've talked about housing. We've talked about, you know, many other affordability. Um, but child care is getting a lot of um a lot of error at the state level um in some of the legislation that's being looked at and the governor's priorities and I don't feel like I have a great sense of all of the child care and preschool options that exist in Golden. So, the fact that Colorado School of Minds opened a brand new center with a number of opportunities uh for child care between 2022 and 2025, so a brand new facility, and our numbers still went down. Um I'd

really like to this year understand a little bit more about, you know, what we have. Um and is it the availability? Is it truly unaffordable? um you know, our own city preschool program, what's the utilization there? So, that was one where um we're doing a lot on housing, we're doing a lot on these other things, but I'd love to at least get some baseline information about childare. We can do that. Thank you. Other thoughts? Yes. Um I just have uh just two quick thoughts. Are we saying older adults are people over 55?

Yes. in many ways in different surveys, but

Okay, thank you. And and we talk so much about affordable housing, but this survey says affordable quality housing. I would love to explore what our residents think the quality would really be because that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Um, as we move forward with a lot of our housing initiatives, I would like to know what they think quality would be and I'll because I can I'm just speak sorry. Um, but I, you know, back in 22, housing was the lowest again, and I think the 12% is the lowest of all the numbers again this time. Um, and I don't, um, I don't know what it was previously. Um, but that quality of housing um was certainly one of the factors of why we engaged in the NLC healthy housing

um, initiative because that's not new housing needed. is the housing we have, you know, what's the quality of it and the livability of it. So, I know that that part of the healthy housing piece um is look is is tied to the quality question. Yeah. Just to follow up on that, um you know, I was it was interesting when you were going through the numbers that the 12% is not is pretty much in line with Front Range. Is that what you said? Yeah. So, we're not an outlier there. And I was just peeking. It was 12% last time. Okay. So this is not the golden pro outer front at all. Yeah.

Um on the um golden specific questions around events I'm I'm kind of remembering I might have taken this survey and when I when I take a survey and I don't know how to answer the question I figure the questions could be better or the answers options. So, special events. Did you attend a special event? Buffalo Bill Days, Golden and Golden, Cantalite Walk, and then it says once per week or more, once per month, every few months. When when the question is really specific to Golden, let's make the answers answerable, too, because you know, Golden and Golden happens once a year. You can't go once a week. So, same thing with the special events, farmers market, movies in the park, super cruise. Let's get the questions lined up because that question I basically discount it.

You gave that feedback so you're not I did hear that from you. Okay. Um the problem really had to do with space and trying to fit in the things that we were trying to fit in. So I think what our attempt was was just to separate out a little bit of those different categories of events so that we could still get a sense of how many people were attending events even if it was a little more difficult. But I understand your point. It is a little bit tricky to try to incorporate it.

Different questions have different answer options. It seems like we could have different answer options. You could keep the question anyway. Apparently I've told you this before, so fix it. So

comment again the the the numbers around cost of living. Um cost of living is really a big broad subject. It would be nice in the next survey, I guess, if we could ask a little more detail on what aspect of cost of living and maybe even what they think the city can do because, you know, grocery prices, is it taxes? I mean, that I didn't see anything in there around those sorts of things. You know, what what it would be nice to know what's in people's heads when you're thinking of that. Obviously co um affordable housing

uh is the in the survey but not um as many as you could kind of dig into.

Um any other questions, thoughts? I appreciated the the custom questions this year. I think that was really helpful to to get a sense of particularly um when we see something like small business support. You know, it's it's really interesting to then also have had the question of how often do you um what did it say? In the past 12 months, approximately how often, if at all, have you or other household members done each of the following in Golden's downtown area? So, that's pretty specific for us to say like at least our downtown businesses. Um, obviously there's small businesses all over the city, but I, you know, if if they're not attending the events, if they're not, you know, visiting uh art downtown or something that that's really helpful information as we look at what we can do for small business support. So, I think the custom questions were great.

Uh, just just something I was thinking about um laboring through this very intense um packet. There was a lot of information tonight, y'all. I'm new. Um I looked at it as well. It was a lot. Um but thinking about the affordability and housing and then looking at shifting demographics and I know this is really the last topic because it was an addenum to that study which I had also never seen before but then having the opportunity to switch from that topic to this topic um around that rating of the following aspects of quality in life right so higher than the custom benchmark and um higher or similar to the national benchmark but golden is a place to raise children compared with some of the future projections in the next 10 years that we were seeing in that study. Um, Golden is a place to retire. Same, right? And then, um, sense of community, which to me implies folks who are able to get invested, stay invested. Um, I think all of those things are really, really tying together. And so, it was interesting to have both pieces of information to kind of bounce off of each other as part as part of prepare preparing for tonight. So yeah, a lot of good information

and I and I refer to this often, you know, over the next three years when people say, you know, everybody thinks Golden's going, you know, everybody hates it and they're all leaving. It's like, well, you know, our most recent information is people really, you know, were happy and planning to stay. So, um, having a, you know, a valid survey that's that's benchmarked, that's statistically valid and it's not just an online survey, um, is really valuable to have those kinds of conversations, uh, with community members who maybe individually have a different opinion to be able to share kind of the community sense of what's what exists or what's going on. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you. Thank you,

Carly. I don't Are you going somewhere? Okay. Like, hey, aren't you up next? Um, our last item on the agenda is um regarding our 2026 uh strategic action plan. All right. Okay. So, I'm gonna um because this is our first look at this year's plan, gonna kind of talk about all the aspects of our strategic plan, even though I know I'm up here a lot talking about this plan, but this plan has several aspects to it. So, one of the top of the pyramid is the success factors. And so, those are really what guide the vision and daily work. So, those are the um vision pieces here. they are of action connected and sustainable, affordable and thriving, safe, inclusive and engaged, respected and relational governance and quality services. So those are the big picture vision categories that council looks at when looking at um the projects that we do and the initiatives that we're looking at. And then the council initiatives are kind of the next piece down and those are the highle policy projects. So those are the ones where um I'm up here on a quarterly basis giving you all updates on what is going on with those projects keeping really close tabs on kind of what the progress is on those because they're really policy focused and of particular concern of council for that year. Then we have key projects which are still really visible um efforts from staff that we're working on throughout the year, but there's a lot of them. There's several. And so it is something that we update at the beginning of the year usually and then towards the end of

the year and then throughout the year in items on the agenda and we try to um mention when they're key projects on the agenda as well just to kind of help tie back. But those are the ones that really do take significant effort and are not just everyday work. And then of course our ongoing maintenance and work does require most of our time as staff and the city that we're doing to maintain services for the community and make sure that everything is operating as it should. So, the council initiatives for the 2026 strategic plan are um a few carryovers and ongoing ones as well as um a couple of new ones. So, this is a full list of them, but I'm going to talk a little bit more about each one. Um so one of the new initiatives um what has been a key project for a long time and is talked about in the community a lot and this has to do with highway 93 north alternatives design. So, this is really um reviewing the Golden Plan and an opportunity to update it with new conceptual designs. Um really looking at the whole intersection and what's changed over the years and trying to figure out a way to make fundable projects that can be implemented to improve 93. So, there's going to be a lot of public outreach on this. Like I said, this is something that um the community has been talking about for many, many years. And so, this has been a key project, but this year is really elevated to this level of council initiative because there's going to be a lot more discussion about it, a lot more work on what that design could look like and what the updates to the Golden Plan might be. The comprehensive plan has

been going on um for the past year or so and um should be ending. will bring the comprehensive plan soon to you all to look at. Um but really have been being intentional about getting all the feedback on that plan and making sure that it's um a guiding document for us. So that's something that council will be seeing soon. The federal policy impacts. This one really has to do with monitoring the federal government changes and policies and how they affect Golden. We've had um a couple of grant big grants, the Lena Gulch project where we're getting a lot of money from the federal government. So, we just want to be really on top of monitoring what changes might affect our funding and how that affects Golden. And so, because there's been a lot of um changes in that realm, it's been something that's been elevated to just make sure that we're um giving council a lot of updates on and keeping track of.

Go ahead. And I just want to make one quick comment with regards to that. Within the last week or so, we've seen examples of other communities within the Front Range that have received uh recent federal grants and recent federal grant agreements that have added in uh what likely for this council would be problematic language. And so we are anticipating as we might see federal grant agreements coming forward that we might encounter some of that language as well which again is part of what we're going to be monitoring and trying to understand what the actual implications might be or when we might uh be faced with those sorts of uh discussions with council. So

um next we have enhanced community engagement program. So, this will be another one coming to council soon to talk a little bit about what um changes in our community engagement approach have looked like and um different uh strategic options for council in that realm. Um funding housing for all has been talked about a lot today, but really has to do with affordable housing, the trust fund and tracking um funding opportunities and legislation, all of those pieces. The regional homelessness projects um are our participation in a regional group um to really look at ways to address homelessness related issues and make sure that we're looking for this long-term sheltering options that might exist within the county as there are currently none. So that's been our biggest challenge that really we've been working through um as a region. And then um two here, this one's really really important and you heard it in the survey and you've heard it at study session today, but it's the wildfire management resiliency planning strategy. So this again is something that the city's been working on for years, right? We've been having key projects that have to do with addressing wildfire management, looking at resiliency in different ways. This has been something that many different departments are looking at from different angles. And by elevating this to a council initiative this year is really putting emphasis on collaborating between these topics internally in city departments. And then also really tying together these big projects and looking at them through this lens of how can we manage wildfire,

be more prepared, resiliency having to do with power outages and um shut offs and all of those kinds of things. So there are several projects listed under this initiative and those are the um plans that we discussed in study session. there the um sustainability projects and grants to look at those uh power shut off resiliency and the egress um for communities looking at evacuation routes. There are a lot of pieces to this because it really takes a lot of planning and infrastructure and development to um tackle this issue, but it's really really important as we all know and it's something that our community is really interested in and cares a lot about. And so this is going to be a big focus for this year and likely future years as well. We also have corridor projects, heart of golden. So, Heart of Golden is a multi-year project that's really looking at the entire corridor of the Clear Creek and um you know, one of the big projects we've talked a lot about is the police and municipal building that we are working on, but there's a lot of pieces that um go with that. One of them was discussed at the study session, the east zone um area and what that looks like. But there's also, you know, the city hall site that we are currently on right now and the future of that as well as planning for the Lion's Park renewal and trail improvements for the creek pedestrian connections 8th to 10th Street. So, there's a lot of projects under this. Uh with this one and the wildfire resiliency strategy, we are trying to organize them a little

bit better in than in years past so we can track the different projects within these initiatives a little bit easier. So we've kind of made some some adjustments with that. But this is another one of the really big um efforts that the city undergoes with lots of different projects. In addition, there were several key projects added. This is um a list of some of them. Some of them I've kind of mentioned that are related to initiatives, but they also have to do with um other pieces and also mentioned with this uh survey results, but just kind of a selection of some of those and then the next steps of this process. So um today is the adoption of the plan and um talking through that we have their quarter 1 update at the end of March, quarter two end of June, quarter three in September and then in December we have kind of the end of year and fourth quarter and then in January is when we ret talk about this all again and go through it again. So, um, those dates might change, but they we stay pretty close to those, but that's when we'll be updating council on these, um, policy initiatives and having this conversation more times into the future. So, with that, I'm happy to answer questions or, um, listen to any feedback.

Thank you, Carly. Um, thanks for the full review. We have a lot of new counselors up here and and it's the first uh first strategic planning process um that they're going through. So, how great to have the next steps as well. Um questions uh for K. The 93 initiative. Um do you see coming up with anything that would influence the capital plan or grant applications to Dr. cog in 2026 or is this more like 2027 and following?

So this year I think we're really focused on the community input piece and designing a little bit further. So I think we need to do those two steps before we're really looking at some of those but timing of that could still happen in this year because you do have to be forward looking for those things. So there could be a scenario where towards the end of this year we have some of that information gathered and we're looking at grants and funding opportunities. Thank you. Yes.

Um under key projects added uh automated vehicle identification system corridor but photo radar. I I get the photo radar. Um given recent comments around flock cameras, things like that, automated vehicle identification system is going to send off some fireworks. What what is that? What are you talking about there? I think it is just the technical name of photo radar. Is that So Avis, the acronym is Avis, and that's what it's referred to in state statute. And so it's photo radar. It's not flock. Uh it is photo radar. Save a lot of emails. Yep. But that's what these days. Yep.

A quick question. Yes. Um Carly, thank you. Um who will be taking the lead in developing our comprehensive wildfire strategy? Will that be city manager's office?

So the the community wildfire protection plan uh the Golden Fire Department takes the lead on that. Uh but we have a wildfire uh resiliency, wildfire mitigation committee, and that is uh made up of parks and wreck, public works, Golden Fire Department, and then manager's office um participates in that uh not at every meeting necessarily, but we've got uh Claire for our management fellow that's been sitting in and helping to coordinate uh some of those efforts as well. Uh but that's who's responsible. um for the wildfire protection plan which is a big piece of the overall new um council initiative

and uh and that group will be taking the lead around the other most of the other elements that are associated with that uh council initiative as well. Okay. Thank you. And we have a kickoff meeting tomorrow. So another question. Yes. Following on that, um, one one thing that's not mentioned in here, we are also going to include working with our county reps and Colorado School of Minds. Yep. Great. Just want to make sure that's out there as well. Yep. Yep.

Any other questions? um since you only put key projects added but if somebody says well what are we doing around planning you know phase 32 of planning changes or zoning changes um historic preservation new carrots and sticks those are in there right but they're just not new right okay just want to make sure thank you they're orange No, I don't know what cover that is. I couldn't decide either. That was fine. So speech, we'll go.

Um, okay. I don't see any other questions. The only clarification I have while the topic, the headline of the council initiative is federal policy impacts and adapt and adaptation. It does mention federal and state within the language of it. And so we know the state is going through budget problems and they likely will impact cities in ways that um you know are not to our advantage. So um it's federal and state policy impacts even though the top the top line says federal the language does include state. Um correct to recognize the reality we're in.

Do you want a motion? I do want a motion. I move adoption of resolution 3278 strategic plan for 2026. I'll second. Thank you. Um discussion, comments, thoughts before we take a vote. I have a comment. Yes.

Um I would like to thank everyone on council for their support of our new wildfire initiative. I really appreciate the support. We had a great conversation during our strategic planning process. Thank you. And um I just I really like the two items that bundle all of the things. This is the first time we've done this and I I think it tells a richer story of all the work that goes on related to a particular item, the wildfire and then obviously Heart of Golden. Um in the past where we just had like top line, it was hard to see all of the very specific efforts that are going on within the city and sometimes in various different departments. So I think that's a really valued addition to to our friends.

All right. Yes.

Sorry. Go ahead. Last uh this having this be my first time going through it. Very appreciative for all of the efforts around not just whatever was new and thrown out when we did our off-site and our planning for this strategic plan, but the ongoing vigilance and oversight for all of the other things that are going. So I appreciate the emphasis on both things because humans get distracted easily. So to to keep all of that and and to again it was this was a significant packet for me personally but it was worth it well worth it to go through and read it multiple times to really get that understanding and I'm grateful that as a new person coming in um that it was presented and packaged in a way that I could actually absorb and make sense of. So thank you. All right, we have a motion and a second. Seeing no other hands, all in favor, please say I.

I. Any opposed? All right, we have ourselves a strategic action plan for the year. Thank you for all of the work and um the great thing about it is we get updates along the way so we don't have to remember. Um there's no further business in front of council so we are adjourned. Thank you all. Perfect.